Thursday, January 21, 2010

Thank You Bloomsbury but I'm Not Ready To Kiss

Whitewashing is the marginalization and disregard for children of color. Whitewashing sends a clear message: people of color do not matter. Our children's psyches have been bruised. Your systematic erasure of their images has warped their sense of self. Your failure to recognize the harm you cause has provoked my most fierce stance against you.Whitewashing-

Fails to accurately represent race and diversity

Says people of color do not matter

Denies readers positive and diverse representation

Is socially and morally wrong

Bloomsbury regretted the Liar mistake. The publisher failed then as they have now to acknowledge our valid criticism. They have failed to denounce whitewashing and to admit they are culpable.

Community, there are larger issues at stake here. This was never about a single book, a single book title.

While I will not ask you to boycott the publisher, I am asking that you remain focused and committed to bringing about real change which is the realization of true diversity and representation in publishing.

17 comments:

I'm in. I know I've been a part of the problem by not reviewing more of what I read whether the book contains POC, different sexual orientations, and more. I plan on reading and reviewing more of what I read, sharing with my readers the diversity of reading.

Yes. I joined the 2010 POC reading challenge, and I've decided to shift the bulk of my reviews from "whatever my greedy-reader hands land on" to "under-represented groups." There's too much at stake to leave making change to chance.

They are going to change it, which I suppose is good, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

I'm prepared to be in it for the long haul so at least if the chance for Bloomsbury to whitewash another cover arises, they may take the high road and represent their characters of color instead of just putting another white girl on the cover of a book about a person of color.

The Boycott page will go, and a new page will go up. We will continue to protest whitewashing. We will post links to incidents and articles about promoting diversity on our new fan page. Of course I need to make a new button.

Thank you for your passion and purpose. I stand with the goal of "bringing about real change which is the realization of true diversity and representation in publishing."

It's important to call out those who get it wrong and applaud those who get it right. I salute multicultural children's book publishers like Just Us Books, Children's Book Press and Lee & Low Books. There are mainstream pubs that hit the mark too. You do a great job of celebrating authentic books for people of color. So cheers to you. Thanks for all you and other bloggers do.

I'm most definitely in. This week has really made me realise that as a blogger it's not good enough for me to just read whatever happens to catch my eye - I need to be out there looking for books that will help me to blog with a focus on promoting diversity. And I will be.